Memorable autobiographies typically commit to one of two routes: recount a real-life experience with the intrigue of a gripping plot, or keep the details vague in favor of evoking strong shared feelings instead. On their fourth album, Brooklyn alt-rock band Momma revisit a life-changing stretch of their 2022 tour in a way that’s personally cathartic for co-founders Allegra Weingarten and Etta Friedman, while offering sentimental universality for the rest of us. Whether they’ve blurred the details to protect themselves or just believe that simplified truths beget more powerful lyrics, Momma are scaling back on specifics while scaling up in sound. That makes Welcome to My Blue Sky’s barreling fuzzball of grunge-pop all the more striking.
Mining moments from the end of their early 20s, Weingarten and Friedman relate a shared memoir rife with coming-of-age charm and self-doubt. Nostalgia for youth is the whole point, even if you didn’t have a childhood worth remembering fondly. Who cares if June through August has long since stopped representing total freedom? With “Stay All Summer,” Momma unfurl a wall calendar where the numerical days mean nothing. It doesn’t matter if you’re proudly single or if you’ve had a ring on your finger so long that it’s formed a permanent indent; when the duo sing about trying to maintain a stiff upper lip after heartbreak on “New Friend,” the way their voices morph from pain into bittersweet confidence summons a familiar empathy. “My Old Street” demonstrates that Weingarten and Friedman are conversant with numerous types of longing: “Mom was getting drunker/And she’s talking like she’s younger/She told me that she missed out on her dreams/And we both miss sixteen.” That pining—for what once was, what could’ve been—is universal, even when we can’t quite put our finger on what, exactly, we miss.
As with 2022’s Household Name, where layers of guitar and vocal harmonies thickened the alt-pop slurry, Welcome to My Blue Sky is a finely tuned production that warrants textural comparisons to crushed velvet or vintage corduroy. Produced by Momma bassist Aron Kobayashi Ritch, the album harkens back to when ’90s alt-rock radio stations chased power-pop choruses with a wink (“Bottle Blonde”) and paired heady grunge fuzz with a rebellious spirit (“Rodeo”). Singles like “Ohio All the Time” are full-volume affairs best heard in a car with the windows rolled down, subwoofer rattling obnoxiously, hand extended to the wind. While the revving engine isn’t included (this time), Momma know that young-adult turbulence sounds best through crunchy guitars that Courtney Love would co-sign, or the slightly warped acoustic strums in the title track that could be lifted from Ashlee Simpson’s Autobiography.
Abstaining from oversharing is a net positive for Momma. To appreciate Welcome to My Blue Sky, you don’t need to sympathize with Weingarten and Friedman’s affecting travelogue or wade back into your own memories—nor does it seem like they want you to. As Momma’s primary singer-songwriters and guitarists, the two recognize that lyrics triple in strength when delivered with the aloof intimacy of bands like Now, Now or the Breeders, while melody carries the meaning. Single “I Want You (Fever)” replicates the rush of an affair with a sneaky bridge and a well-timed shoegaze chorus to match its whispered demands: “Pick up and leave her/I want you, fever.” The intoxicating “Last Kiss” is so indebted to the Deftones resurgence that it’s almost impressive: a tale of seduction and abandonment enhanced by massive nu-metal guitars and a hammering rhythm section, complete with an instrumental dropout where Weingarten whispers through crunchy voice distortion. Too much context would snap the song out of its sultry ambiance. Welcome to My Blue Sky isn’t concerned with filling in the whole backstory; Momma prefer to capture a snapshot with all the youthful romanticism of a faded Polaroid.
